


only the dead walk at night

by siriuslydraco



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2018-11-17 12:10:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11275071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siriuslydraco/pseuds/siriuslydraco
Summary: you seem to me a ghost, but your heart beat is real beneath my fingertips





	only the dead walk at night

**Author's Note:**

> Jonsaaaaa!! I need help. Can't stop writing them.

The cold is unforgiving, but Sansa finds if she does not think of it then it won't hurt so much. She clenches and straightens out her gloved hands repeatedly as she stands in the iron cage that squeaks and shakes as she ascends up the great wall of ice. There is a breeze up here that is laced with frost and it kisses her face and turns her cheeks a scarlet red and her lips a shade of blue. When she huffs out her breaths they swirl from her trembling mouth in a cloud of silver and it shimmers with the icicles in the air. She'd almost find it beautiful if she weren't so cold. But she is of the North, and wolfs blood and ice run through her veins. She will not give in to the cold. She will not be weak. 

The cage rattles to a stop and she peers down to see the height that she now looks on from. It's unsettling and freeing all at once and she thinks unseemly things that should not be uttered aloud- _if I were to just step right off_ \- but she does not think on it further. It's unnecessary to burden her mind with something so trivial as death when she has seen so much. Dwelling on living was a more horrid concept. 

It's colder when she gets to the top, and she guesses that the ridges of ice -carved out like tunnels- that she walks through have something to do with the sudden bite of frost that is altogether devastating to be submerged in. Her teeth shatter against themselves and her arms wrap around herself as she pulls the heavy cloak of the Night's Watch tighter around her shivering body. Jon had given it to her when she had first come, but it hardly provided her with any warmth. She thinks of Jon then, and Uncle Benjen, and wonders how they could have faced this cold so bravely. 

She is a coward towards the winter, and that thought only makes her colder. 

There is- despite the harshness of it all- an undeniable beauty that befalls her as she stands on one of the battlement parapets that hang from the edge of the Wall. It is dark but the moon shines her pale face towards the north, and each icicle and glittering snowflake sparkles with an intensity so great she can almost forget that men stood where she is standing and fired arrows at wildlings. She can almost forget that she stands in yet another place that to fell to killing. 

Dreams of old cross her mind; memories of a time when she had thought the Night's Watch to be knights in black, and when songs sung about them had made her thrill with delight. How she had loved knights and songs, and now they made her bitter. There was no comfort in songs and stories, they were a delusion for the living and a lie for the dead to discover. _I am the dead,_ she thinks, _and I have been since they killed my father._

Maybe this cold, this unbearable temperature, is the sole reason she wanders so often towards the top of the Wall. Maybe it's because she seeks feeling, and the cold can resurrect a sense within herself she lost so long ago. It can make her feel alive despite the fact that she knows living is only a greater torture. 

Behind her there is a soft noise that makes her turn around, her hand gripping onto the wooden parapet as she wobbles, and her eyes fall upon a dark shadow that is cast along the ice as the flames from the torches illuminate it. _It is Jon_. There is no denying it as her blue eyes take his shape in. She feels that sudden flutter that makes her heart tug inside her chest and she wills it to stop. It's a common place response nowadays whenever she's around him, and it both infuriates and thrills her. 

Jon has allowed her to break through the facade she's carried around for so long. With him she's not the willful and terrified young girl she was under the scrutinising eyes of Cersei Lannister, or the cold and sharp woman that was constructed by Petyr Baelish. She is _Sansa_ , and it was her true self that ran towards him in the snow and into his arms, and not some one who wore a mask akin to her face. The thought of the feeling of his arms around her slight body has crowded her mind for days, and she thinks of it most nights when she seeks warmth and love from someone; _anyone_. Her cheeks blush now, and she is glad she can use the cold as an excuse for the rosy speckles that begin to grow on her face. 

Sansa still cannot understand how her bastard half brother is the only man who can make her feel alive. _He is the only person who makes me feel like I'm home._  

"Jon" she greets, her voice giving away nothing of how she's feeling inside. She can thank Lord Baelish for that talent at least, if for nothing else. She does not wish for Jon to know exactly the conflicting thoughts that she carries within herself these days. 

"Sansa" his voice is gruff, and more Northern than her own, and something about it's lilt reminds her of her father. _Our father, mine and Jon's,_ she corrects herself "something told me you'd be here" 

He steps into the light that she's bathed in and she can see now that he's not alone. Red eyes emerge from the curtain of half light and she feels her heart pull at itself at the sight of Jon's direwolf. Ghost reaches Jon's hip and his snow white coat rivals the snow around them. His eyes are crimson and striking, and she suddenly feels as if she's in sight of the gods. His eyes are the eyes of a weirwood tree, but she shuns the thought. There are no gods. 

"I like it here" she tells Jon, turning away from Ghost and his stare, somehow he reminds her too much of Lady "I've begun to understand why you've stayed here all these years. It's worth protecting, even if it is the coldest place in the seven kingdoms" 

"Aye it is" he offers her a smile, and she realizes how she's never seen him as beautiful before, but there's a sadness to him in that moment that makes her frown "but I won't be here much longer" 

She doesn't say anything but just looks out towards the horizon; the dark line of sky and land that is a flickering shadow of it's true appearance. Just like she and Jon, she thinks. They were only shadows of who they once were, only ghosts. He doesn't speak again but joins her as she watches the last pieces of light in the sky dim their way to blackness, and she can only imagine what he's thinking. 

She can't imagine him leaving Castle Black because it's the only place he's ever truly wanted to belong, the only place he talked of when they were children. But she knows the scars he bears are too great for him to ever want to stay. _They murdered me, my own brothers._ Sansa knows he can not stay in this place that is now dead and cold to him; once a place of great honor to him and a place where he'd dreamed of as a boy. She pities him, but another part of her takes great comfort in knowing she's not the only one who's dreams were shown to be what they really were. At least he understands. 

"When will you leave?" Sansa asks him as she turns her eyes back to him. He's all black and grey, just like the sky and his eyes twinkle like the stars as hers meet his. He had been looking at her already, and instead of blushing or looking abashed, Jon just stares right back at her without apologies. 

 _Where will you go?_ She had asked him.

 _Where will we go?_ He had answered her, confirming to her that he would never leave her alone again. Those words that he had said with such conviction had meant more to her than anything, but she could not accept them. She was still convinced it was all too good to be true, that he'd leave her like the rest. 

"Two days perhaps, and Sansa I wish you'd understand that you're coming with me" Jon tells her, his black eyes looking deep into hers and she cannot ignore the fact they flick to her lips "wherever I go, you go. There's no more being apart for you and I" 

"I sometimes dream that I'm back in Kings Landing. I dream of Joffrey, or Cersei and Illyn Payne" her eyes flick to his face, but he is stone and ice and does not move "I get so frightened because I think I'm back there, and that I never truly escaped. And sometimes I dream of Winterfell and Ramsay and I'm terrified of him and what he'll do. I left the monsters in Kings Landing and I was handed straight to monsters in Winterfell. I'm afraid to leave Jon, because I don't know what's going to happen to me out there" 

"I wish you'd tell me Sansa. I wish you'd tell me what it was like so I could help you. So I could protect you better" Jon takes a step closer to her, and beside him his direwolf shifts against her hip. He watches as she jolts a little at the contact of Ghost, but a shaking hand that's cloaked in leather strokes through the fur and Jon can't help but feel that he's not the only one who offers her protection. 

"Do you remember what it was like? To be dead?" her voice is heavy and thick and as the words are carried to him he feels a trickle of ice run down his spine. He hates to think of what awaited him when he died, and he has not shared with her what it was like. She looks at him with those blue eyes and he feels the ground beneath his feet vanish with the beauty of her gaze. He's lightheaded and irritated at himself for even thinking on her beauty. 

"I remember nothing. There _was_ nothing" he gauges her reaction, but if she's shocked or upset that there is no afterlife then she doesn't show it "there was just darkness" 

" _That_ is what it felt like. A darkness I can't run from, one that set upon me the minute they took our father's head" Sansa tells him, and the mention of his father sets a tightness in his stomach. He's wanted her to accept him as her brother his whole life. _But not now_ , Jon thinks, _not when she looks like the ghost of a girl I loved_. "I feel like that even now, and sometimes I wonder if I _have_ died and the gods just haven't told me yet" 

"You don't need to feel that way. I'll protect you from darkness Sansa, I promise you" 

There is no shelter from the storm, she wants to tell him, there are no knights and princes and no fair maidens to protect. There are no songs and stories to believe in. Only darkness and pain, and she is a Stark she thinks, she can not run from darkness. 

"I don't feel alive anymore Jon. I feel dead" she whispers, imagining her words are carrying all the way to the vanishing horizon and laying there as they're buried. She wants to be rid of them, she wants to say them so they're not weighed on her shoulders any longer. She's just another Stark ghost. For a moment the only things she can hear is the whistling of the wind and her and Jon's breaths. Ghost rubs against her hip again and she takes comfort in it. 

"I feel like that too sometimes" Jon's voice is quiet, barely there but she hears him and turns her eyes to his face "ever since the red lady brought me back I feel like I'm only half a man, half a ghost. And there's this anger in me I've never had before. This darkness" 

Something about his words make her shiver, but she's glad that he feels the same, that he understands. Here are two ghosts; shadows of Lady Catelyn and Lord Eddard and around them are the same shades of black and grey. He feels dead too, but she wonders if he feels just a little more alive like she does when he's around. A part of her mind, the one that is almost gone, the one that belongs to the old Sansa wonders at how her bastard brother can be the same as her. She'd always thought him inferior, like he wasn't part of her family but now as he stands in the dark and whispers words she's longed to hear she believes there is no one as much like her as him. 

"Maybe you and I aren't that different after all" Sansa tells him, the red curls of her hair dancing around her face and over her sky blue eyes. There's a tenderness in him then that startles her, and his gloved hand comes to tuck her hair behind her ears. Wistfulness and a longing colors his face as he holds a long curl in his fingers, and she wonders if he's thinking of his wildling girl who had hair kissed by fire too. She doesn't know if that thought makes her delight in the hope of the romanticism of Jon, or if she really wants him to think of _her_ , and no one else. 

"Maybe we aren't, and perhaps that's why we need to stick together" he lets go of her hair and lets his hands limply hang by his side "I don't want to lose anyone else Sansa" 

He carries a sadness in him that reminds her so much of the look her father permanently had in his eyes, and she finds she steps closer to him as they gaze at each other. The ice that swirls from their mouths mix in the air around them and she can't help but notice how his bottom lip juts out and how his top lip is carved like an archers bow. He does the same to her, looking at her like he's only seeing her now for the first time. 

 _The cold winds are rising, and the dead rise with them._ But perhaps the dead have already risen, and they are now staring at each other. 

The small space between them is conquered and she can't remember who moved first. Maybe it was her desperation for him, for that feeling of just being or perhaps it was both of them at the same time, driven by the forbidden urges they both feel. But it doesn't matter to her who initiated the contact because she feels his lips either way. She only hopes that whatever gods are left can turn away long enough to not see what they are doing. But Ghosts weirwood eyes are on them; she can feel it. 

His lips are warm and his tongue is wet, and she feels a burning inside of her that she hasn't felt in so long. It's a feeling of pure comfort and she can't believe she's finding it in Jon Snows arms. Her back is pressed against the ice as he pushes her against it, and she knows they're giving in to the darkness by kissing like lovers do. Her arms are vices around his neck and she never wants to let go; not when he's so warm and beautiful and so _dark_. 

His teeth nip her bottom lip and Sansa lets out a trembling whimper into the warm crevice of his mouth that is matched with one from him. _This is your brother_ , she keeps repeating inside her head but with each flick of his tongue against hers she abandons the thought and lets it lie inside her mind.  They are ghosts anyway, it should not matter what the dead do.  

His lips slide from hers and onto the porcelain expanse of her cheek, kissing a soft trail all the way to her neck. His teeth are like a wolfs as he bites and nibbles the soft skin, but there is a feeling of fire as he licks a strip under her ear akin to dragons flames. An odd thought she ignores once he pulls her skin into his mouth and sucks. 

"Jon" her voice is a sweet moan, so light and delicate it arouses something in Jon that is undeniably animal and his hands ache to rip her dress away and to suck every inch of her pale skin "Jon" she repeats, this time louder and suddenly he's shaken from whatever spell he was under. 

She's colder when he pulls away, and when the feeling of his lips are gone. Jon stands before her, his hands still on her hips as she's pressed against the ice, but his eyes are wide as they stare at her. He stumbles backwards and lets her go and then his eyes are anywhere but her. Sansa takes a step toward him, her hands outstretched and longing to feel him again, to regain that comfort she had found in him but he shakes her off. 

"I'm your brother" he tells her and she tries to ignore the disgust rolling inside her as he says the words aloud. _You're as bad as the Lannisters,_ a cruel voice echos inside her. 

"Jon please -" 

"Your brother Sansa!" Jon quips, cutting off any plea she was about to begin. His eyes are furious and he turns away from her, almost disappearing into the shadow. The flames in the brackets are dying and if he walked just a little further away it would almost be like he had never been there at all, swallowed by darkness and leaving her alone "you've never thought of me as one before, but I'm just the same as Robb or Bran or Rickon. I'm your _brother_ " 

"Stop saying that!" she tells him, boldly taking his hand and placing it above her chest, right where her heart is. He can't ignore the drumming of it beneath his fingertips. But ghosts shouldn't have heartbeats, he thinks. "That's how you make me feel Jon, all the time. I feel alive with you. You said it yourself, we're the same you and I, and I don't feel dead with you and I know you feel the same with me. You wouldn't have kissed me if you didn't" 

He rips away from her touch, and he almost wants to fall back in her arms with the look that appears in her eyes. _Almost_. 

"This can never be spoken of Sansa, and it won't happen again" his voice is a warning and she can feel the tears start to fall from her eyes but she pushes them back. I will not cry, she tells herself, I will not be weak. "Come Ghost" he adds as he commands the white direwolf but it does not move, his red god's eyes peering at Jon with discontent. 

He rubs his head against Sansa and Jon peers at his wolf with disappointment. He sees him as a symbol of the protection he swore to her; one he knows he's now sinned for. He looks at her once more, her all red hair like flickering flames in the wind and her eyes beginning to fill with the sea, and then he's gone. 

She watches him leave, his frame being swallowed by the tunnel of darkness and the heart that had beat inside her moments before turns once again to stone. They had been nothing more than two ghosts upon the Wall, and without him she's as empty as she's ever been. 

 _The cold winds are rising, and the dead rise with them._  


End file.
